f13.net

Not sure what the point of sentries are.

To give those small groups something to kill?

I think the more interesting thing will be small groups assaulting back towers and such.  
A Flame ram takes 40 supply... Isn't there a guild perk that allows you to carry 15? Or does it go up to 20?
So without the perk, it will take a group of 8 to throw up two rams.

Hearing that it's possible for your own team to sabotage your efforts is... worrying, especially since their is no level gating and people are known to make alts.

Hearing that it's possible for your own team to sabotage your efforts is... worrying, especially since their is no level gating and people are known to make alts.

From what I remember from my time doing WvW in the first beta weekend, the markers show all engagements, not just large ones.  If it were up to me, I'd only show when keeps or supply depots are under attack to have a bit more fog of war so there's more opportunities for scouting, surprise attacks and smaller skirmishes.

Your account is bound to server and the characters follow the account although it would be easy enough to pay the server transfer fee when the match ups changed.  I've learned not to underestimate the lengths that an asshat with a credit card (especially if its their mom's) will go to cause trouble in an MMO.

Couldn't you just delete the char from the grief account and start on another server?

After a server transfer you are locked out of WvW for a few weeks.  That wouldn't work, either.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eE-1WMSSMw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eE-1WMSSMw)
This is what we should aspire to.

I'm hoping to start playing in a few hours and I haven't played in any of the betas or read a huge amount about the game so I have one question: how do I get into the WvW game? What key do I press, or do I need to go to a special place or something? That's pretty much all I need to know.

Click the PvP icon at the top of the UI. Pretty self-explanatory from there.

Doubtful they'd pay to transfer under that scenario though.  They could do it for free where they are.

You remember a completely different DAoC then I do.

I did play it for over 5 years for a reason.  I also enjoyed WAR a great deal.  With a solid group, the pvp in both games was extremely fun.  GW2 forces you to run with the zerg more... and I'm not so keen on being a lemming.  

I find we're just killing people on the fringe for loot, marks, and xp.  It's moderately entertaining, but hardly incentive to fight for the team.

You guys choose a zerg server. Go to Fergeson's crossing no zerg there.  Plus supply camps and dolyoks are great for small groups and have a substantial effect on Map control.

I say give yourself some time to look beyond the launch days chaos. I would say that you are stuck somewhere in those golden DAoC memories that prevent you to have any PvP fun anymore but then you say you liked Warhammer and I go  :ye_gods:

Why transfer, just keep deleting and rolling a new character to grief with since your level and gear don't matter. You don't need to transfer when you can roll a new toon, go straight into WvW (dumb), force yourself into any squad you want (dumber) and sabotage gameplay resources just because your an asshole and want to (dumbest).

GW2 forces you to run with the zerg more...

GW2 forces you to run with the zerg more... and I'm not so keen on being a lemming.  

Perhaps it will improve after people figure out what they are doing.

The game has been out ONE day. Do you really expect people out there to understand tactics, strategy, the metagame and all the other layers of complexity of such a game on day 1, with all the characters in the battlefield between level 5 to about 25?

The game has been out ONE day. Do you really expect people out there to understand
<snip>
I say give yourself some time to look beyond the launch days chaos. I would say that you are stuck somewhere in those golden DAoC memories that prevent you to have any PvP fun anymore but then you say you liked Warhammer and I go  :ye_gods:

You have more faith in humanity than I do.

The SURPRISE NEW BUILD REBOOTING IN 3 MINUTES thing is really fucking annoying when you just got into WvW after 2 hours of waiting.

Yep, the ability for my guard to swap from mace/shield to staff at the press of a button has turned the tides on both major PvE encounters and WvW to a smaller extent.  It's a really neat system.

I haven't been doing any WvW yet, but everytime I look at the scoreboard my server "Henge of Denravi" is always blowing it out.  It's crazy.

What servers did the goons pick? Also, I am sure their guild tag is [GOON] so they should be pretty recognizable. I hate that the guild tags are not unique across servers. Sure, with only 4 characters to choose from that would have been hellish if they were, but when all you can see of a guild is the tag, having multiple guilds with the same tag is pretty meh.

In WvW, have you found the guardian's static abilities to be a hindrance and/or not used to their full potential? On mace, one of the attacks lays down a small circle which heals you and hurts enemies. Great in PvE but in PvP no enemy stands in it of course and if I want to get out of the way of some attacks then I'm leaving the circle too. I've also had allies actively avoid the staff run buff circle which makes me rage in a very special way.

I'm running greatsword which has the leap on 4, and also Judge's somethingsomething as a utility, which teleports me to my target; between the two of those mobility isn't a huge problem for me so far in WvW. I'd still welcome some kind of a sprint but I haven't found a way to do that yet.

Henge of Denravi has PRX which was one of the zerg guilds in Shadowbane that pretty much ruined an entire server(Treachery).  CND probably planned to dominate that server with them from the get go.  Imagine the goons but 100% of the players are focused on World PvP.  I'd move if I was on that server frankly.   Although it could get interesting when they finally get put up against the reddit/goon servers I guess.

I'll have to check out Retreat. Staff doesn't really fit what I'm going for.

Retreat is pretty handy. I've been using Greatsword/Sword and Torch, both have a close and a bit of aoe, decent all-arounders for offensive play.

That screenshot I took? I'm on the Goon server. Autowin PvP it is not.

I guess this release reminds us how bad RvR is without elo matching.

lol, what?

They said specifically said they were re-match every 24hrs until the populations settle.  This worked well in the BWEs. But they haven't doing it and so we are stuck with a bunch of sever mismatches. Its no fun when you can't leave you your portal keep without being swarmed.

Personally, I think they should re match, every 5 to 7 days at random so people can't game resets.

I bitched and moan in guild chat, but I'll just say it here.

It's fucking awful. It's bad and the the designers should feel bad for how little thought went into it.

Bah, I don't care if people knock me for thinking that. I'll go a step further.

The RvR here was a fucking afterthought. It's barely designed. The skills in the game don't match the nature of RvR and the map design is shit. The siege design is bad. The choice of having more NPCs/beasts on the battlefield is retarded.

It's complete trash.

If you like it, you have bad taste. Which is fine, I just want people to know that.

lol, what?

They said specifically said they were re-match every 24hrs until the populations settle.  This worked well in the BWEs. But they haven't doing it and so we are stuck with a bunch of sever mismatches. Its no fun when you can't leave you your portal keep without being swarmed.

Personally, I think they should re match, every 5 to 7 days at random so people can't game resets.

Bah, I don't care if people knock me for thinking that. I'll go a step further.

The RvR here was a fucking afterthought. It's barely designed. The skills in the game don't match the nature of RvR and the map design is shit. The siege design is bad. The choice of having more NPCs/beasts on the battlefield is retarded.

It's complete trash.

If you like it, you have bad taste. Which is fine, I just want people to know that.

They HAVE been rematching. Usually about 15 minutes after I make it through the queue.  :angryfist:

You could try asking.

Also, eventually people will build teleport destinations.  Nobody is bothering yet because the maps are getting reset every day.

Well as a group they (the groups on Henge of Denravi) have a lot of experience doing this form of zerg PvP.   What server are you on with the Goons?   This is the sort of thing that pisses me off about the server restrictions.  I'd love to have a character playing in that fight occasionally.

Well as a group they (the groups on Henge of Denravi) have a lot of experience doing this form of zerg PvP.   What server are you on with the Goons?   This is the sort of thing that pisses me off about the server restrictions.  I'd love to have a character playing in that fight occasionally.

It has elo matching, but it will take a few weeks for it to successfully calculate.

It's almost like they need data to do matching.

It's almost like they need data to do matching.

The data won't tell them much yet.  People are still learning how to play their classes and working out strategy.  I'm going to play the tournament style to work on my skirmish skills and go back to WvW when the game has had a little time to settle in.

Yeah, I'm still learning how to handle my ele.  I wouldn't feel comfortable in wvw yet. 

Yeah, I'm still learning how to handle my ele.  I wouldn't feel comfortable in wvw yet. 

Can you queue as a group? I haven't tried that yet. If not that's the very first thing that needs to be added.

The WvWvW queue is a bit funny though, i did it with a bunch of friends, i queued up later than them (as in, a good 5-10 minutes later) i got in before any of them... We'd also all queued for the same borderlands.
Think the first of them got in 20 minutes after me.

I think the only thing you can queue for a group as is the tournament pvp.  If you queue as a group, you will stay in the group but your queue will resolve individually.  Does that make sense?

Yeah, we keep getting rotated/map resets, but wind up with the same pairing.

That said: Mesmers are seriously bullshit in wvw. Holy shit the amount of havoc a glamour mesmer can cause in a zerg fight. I went about an hour before seeing a hostile mesmer try any of the same bullshit tricks I was doing (run forward, feedback/berserker, shatter, run away!) to thin the herd.

Part of the issue I see is that sPVP balance and WvW balance are completely different things. Some abilities simply don't balance well when you scale them based on having a max of 2-5 of them around, versus 40. There are no immunity timers, so you can get chain CC'd pretty badly in a zerg fight.

  I think that's why I prefer the small scale.  It's easier to neutralize the impact of a single class.

Most of the jade quarry players I fought are not very good in small group engagements

I'm RIGHT HERE!

There are no immunity timers

what

You can get chain dazed all day long if people line them up. The immunity is Stability, but it basically means in WvW a dozen people can chain control abilities on a point for quite a while.

The flip side is there aren't many hard controls (stun, knockdown) and very few are AE. But soft control AEs come in spades (blind, chill)

Is it just me or are rewards for WvW pretty weak? I mean, it's a lot of fun (and maybe I'm doing it wrong) but it seems like you get almost no XP for doing it, and while the repair bills add up quick there's very little in the way of loot (you've gotta get in on the "Finish Him" to have a chance at loot from a player).

Is it just me or are rewards for WvW pretty weak? I mean, it's a lot of fun (and maybe I'm doing it wrong) but it seems like you get almost no XP for doing it, and while the repair bills add up quick there's very little in the way of loot (you've gotta get in on the "Finish Him" to have a chance at loot from a player).

Isn't it sort of inevitable in an open world PvP game? PS2 included. Otherwise you get Eve where people bulk their numbers until the server is failing or the enemy can't threaten them.

Planetside2 has 6 hours queues?

Well, no, but then GW2 didn't have queues while it was in beta either.

You know, it's very frustrating.

Roaming wvw is extremely fun, but it's terrible to try and get a group together to do it because of the queues.

Queue up for a ridiculous amount of time, get out there, have your server be a bunch of scatter brained lemmings, lose your cash, your time, your keeps, your pants... Log off wondering wtf just happened and why isn't this as awesome as it should be.

In all honesty, though, I think it's just new. I think it'll level off over time especially once transferring costs money. I'm keeping my hopes up that it will get better and that one of the 2 servers I switch back and forth on gets some good leaders and strats.

In the meantime, maybe I'll try some sPvP along with leveling my engineer.

There is also apparently a bug that may cause people to get in before the people who queued before them?

Well for a guild there is no point because.

A. the reason why your server is hot is because of YOU. You do well so people flood to your server to leach off your awesome.
B. the stuff you earn is persistent to the server, transferring means starting over and playing against people who didn't bother to leave their home server, meaning working back up from a disadvantage and even if you do do well you have A to deal with.

If you prefer a football analogy: If you don't like playing for the Patriots, you can always go play in Miami!

No they don't play for patriots.  They are gibbering morons who crowd the field delaying Tom Brady from getting on the field but then take credit for what he does when he finally does.

His wording seems to indicate that you can queue for more than one WvW map at the same time. Like, queue for Server X Borderland, and for Eternal Battleground at the same time. I was under the impression that the last thing I queue for overwrites all previous enqueueing. Anyone else?

I didn't expect Tarnished Coast to do so well

gibbering morons who crowd the field delaying Tom Brady from getting on the field but then take credit for what he does when he finally does

He's saying you should queue up for the borderlands, get in there, then queue up for eternal.  Once you are in the borderlands doing WvW you can queue up for eternal, not at the same time.

Ok. Too bad. What the game really needs, given the present situation, is a "Play now - Queue all borders" button really bad.

EDIT: On second thoughts, that wouldn't help us guilds and group of friends, like my group of friends, since either we all join the same one or we don't even bother most of the time. Still, "Queue all" would be a fair addition until they give us a transparent queue system.

I'm wondering if WvW would have the same characterizations of "casual" and "serious."  Why would a "serious" player be attracted to so much randomness?  Why would a "casual" player expect to futz around away from the flag and get something in return?  Sooner or later there has to be teamwork or people are going to go back to pve for easy loot and xp.  

I've seen it happening.  The "serious" players are calling out orders and people are following them.  It's like a real war, with different levels of skill and awareness.  Like the rest of the game, teamwork is encouraged and things work better when it happens.

Well, it'll "work" that way anything, we just don't need 1000000000 players queuing for a 2000 man instance. Some of those guys can't get the same experience without being in the exact same server they que'd in.

The hardcore could represent the server

Realm identity is core to the experience of WvW, IMO.

Playing the game and competing against the same guilds and seeing the same players is the core identity. The servers are coincidental, merely tools to facilitate that.

How would hardcoreness be determined?  Maybe I'm reading this wrong but it's starting to sound like an argument for personal ratings, which would go totally against what this game is about.

It is as much about who you play with as who you play against. Random queuing into random green/blue/red assignments misses the point.

Right now if I were to get a slot in WvW I worry I might be taking it instead of someone who would help the server more.

No, you can currently only be queued for one map at a time. Here’s a basic breakdown on how the queues are setup:
-   You can only be queued for one WvW map at a time.
-   If you try to enter a WvW map while queued for another one and the new map is not full, you will join that new map and still be queued for the first one you tried to enter.
-   If you are queued for a WvW map and try to queue for a second WvW map that is full, you will be asked if you would like to queue for the second map. If you select ‘No’, you will still be in queue for the first map. If you select ‘Yes’, then you will enter the queue for the second map and no longer be queued for the first map.
-   You can be queued for a WvW map while in an overflow map, but you will not be able to see scores or team names while you are in an overflow map.
Due to the amount of people we see queued for maps while spaces are open in other maps, we have started talking about possible ways we can change the current setup to help get people into the other maps if they have space available, but that stuff is all still in the discussion phase so it’s not likely we’ll be able to change things anytime soon.

I'm wondering, are smaller guilds coming up with 100g, or are people joining groups in WvW?  Up to now I've just been running with the zerg ungrouped.

The guild was finally ready to form a group for WvW last night, only to find that if you want to form a group larger than 5, you need a 100 gold Commander's Compendium.   :uhrr:

So, a barrier to guild WvW as of now.  The twelve of us pooled our resources and came up with about 2.5g.  I'm wondering, are smaller guilds coming up with 100g, or are people joining groups in WvW?  Up to now I've just been running with the zerg ungrouped.

Jackie Chan going "oooo?" .jpg

So if a guild wants to do WvW together for fun and influence, 5 is the max size?  Or do we just need to be near each other? 

How are you even getting into WvW together and in a timely fashion?

How are you even getting into WvW together and in a timely fashion?

You play on Tarnished Coast, right? I'm sure you've heard about the Send Money To Odinzu For A Compendium Fund by now. 

Tee hee.  Which guild are you in?  And how is it?

Another good idea would be to award full points for keeps towers, castles and camps you control between 3pm to 3am, and only half points for what you capture and hold between 3am and 3pm. It wouldn't hurt anybody and if anything would help making all matches a little less one-sided by keeping the score a little closer.

I'm in Jademoon (http://www.jademoon.org). We're really not a srs bsns pvp outfit, but there's 1-2 of us in wvw basically all the time -- I know at least one of our people levels his characters 100% through wvw. Right now he's having a bad week.  :awesome_for_real:

In ouir first 'long' matchup we're up against Dragonbrand and Maguuma. I don't mind the Maguuma part (it's fun to fight the goons, and they're far from being scary 100% map dominating mofos -- we do a lot of back and forth and our scores aren't that far apart), but Dragonbrand is one of those huge servers with many wvw-focused alliances that dropped off from the highest tier. Needless to say, they're dominating all maps except EB, and their organization is so good that surgical zerg strikes fail to accomplish anything of lasting value (all gates are reinforced, people are actively scouting and destroying siege as soon as we set them up, they have dedicated defenders in every tower who WILL repair the gate and keep the tower going until a much larger zerg shows up and nukes ours, etc). I think the best "op" I was in involved taking the two supply camps and a weakly-defended tower in quick succession, and quickly doubling back in the water (omg stealth) to flank their people who were just about to retake their tower, then trying to go up against another tower and getting obliterated. The last matchup before the 1week one was pretty much us steamrolling two lower-tier servers, and everyone was ecstatic -- however, I was afraid something like this would happen.

I honestly think Shadowbane had a good solution to this, though maybe not the best, where a Guild's city could only be seiged in a certain window the guild chose, so that your guild at least had the chance to fight back against a siege.

Another good idea would be to award full points for keeps towers, castles and camps you control between 3pm to 3am, and only half points for what you capture and hold between 3am and 3pm. It wouldn't hurt anybody and if anything would help making all matches a little less one-sided by keeping the score a little closer.

Mike Ferguson on the Current State of the World (vs. World)
by Mike Ferguson on September 18, 2012
 
Hey everyone, time for another world versus world update! Today I’ll be recapping some of the more important WvW related issues we’ve dealt with since we launched the game.
First, let’s talk about queues for WvW. Here’s how they work:
You can only be queued for one WvW map at a time.
If you try to enter a WvW map while queued for another map and the new map is not full, you will join that new map, but still be queued for the first one you tried to enter.
If you are queued for a WvW map and try to queue for a second WvW map that is full, you will be asked if you would like to queue for the second map. If you select ‘No,’ you will still be in queue for the first map. If you select ‘Yes,’ then you will enter the queue for the second map and no longer be queued for the first map.
You can be queued for a WvW map while in an overflow map, but you will not be able to see scores or team names at all while you are in an overflow map.
As many people already know, quite a few worlds frequently have multi-hour queues to get in to WvW (particularly the Eternal Battlegrounds), but there are also worlds that have minimal or even no queues at all during prime time.

If you are playing on one of the worlds that has extremely long queue times and can move to one of the lesser populated worlds, we would recommend doing this, since spreading out the player population will not only reduce queue times, but also help provide better competition for all worlds.
One reason some people experience long wait times is that we are still seeing extremely high concurrency rates, which makes queues longer on worlds that have a large number of players focused on WvW. We also discovered a bug that was allowing people to queue up and enter maps ahead of players who had been queued for much longer. Please check on our forums for an announcement when the fix has been implemented. This should fix the problem of some people staying queued for hours while other people can queue up for the same map and enter within a matter of minutes.
Another thing that is fairly constant across all worlds is that Eternal Battlegrounds (the central map in WvW) is by far the most popular map for people to queue for.  You may help lower your wait time by queuing up for a borderlands map first, then entering the Eternal Battlegrounds queue once you are in the borderlands.

Now let’s talk about matchmaking and match timing.
During Headstart Access, we encountered a few issues that required us to take world matchmaking offline for a few days at launch. During this period, we let the matches run a bit longer, which is why some of you noticed that we had matches that lasted 2-3 days or scores would not be cleared out properly when matches were supposed to be reset.
The good news is that we were able to fix those issues quickly and have been running 24 hour matches since September 1. These games have given our ranking system enough data that, starting Friday, September 14, matches will run for 7 days.
We’ve changed to 7-day WvW matches instead of 14-day matches to let the ranking system get a few more points of data faster and to help people get used to playing in a longer match format. WvW match results and the initial world rankings can be found on our forums.

They needed to turn off server switching before they went to the long matches with big bonuses.

Pfft - 24% map completion on a level 80. My 54 has 35%!

"Put some skill points here, toss a few there... it doesn't even matter... you're a thief!"  That video is hilarious.

I don't know how any game developer can have stealth, teleports, and stuns/knockdowns in their pvp game.  It's seriously clownshoes.

I don't get how you can have that high a map % and not be 80! Especially if you're gathering! I feel like I get XP just for getting up to use the bathroom in this game.

Are you making discoveries in there?

Hi all,
For a variety of performance reasons we limit the number of characters that are reported to any given game client. This report limiting (or culling, as it’s also been referred to) is generally distance based and limits both the amount of bandwidth and client side processing (rendering, etc.) required to play the game. Ideally this shouldn’t be something that you notice happening as characters will simply fade in when they’re “far” away from you. In the best case this happens far enough away that even if you’re looking right at them when it happens it isn’t too visually distracting. Unfortunately, there are some situations in the game in which this setup doesn’t work as well as we’d like and it seems that those situations come up in WvW rather more often than in other parts of the game. The higher player densities that we see in large battles are an obvious example of where this system goes awry. If only the nearest N characters are reported to you but there are N+100 characters within effective battle range then many of those characters will be invisible. There’s never a great time to be dealing with invisible characters, but I think that it’s fair to say that during a large battle is one of the worst times.
In WvW one of the things that we see exacerbating the issue is this: From the moment a character is first reported to your client to the first moment that your client is able to render it a non-zero amount of time passes. During this time your client is doing things like loading textures from disk, which can be (at least in computer terms) fairly slow what with all that accessing of spinning, physical storage media. So that means that a character who is moving towards you can potentially appear first at a much closer point even than the one at which they were reported because, of course, they were still moving during that load time.
MajorKong’s screenshot doesn’t immediately look like the situation I just described so it may be that there’s some kind of bug lurking in there as well. We will certainly be looking into that possibility.
That was a lot of detail but really I’m posting to let you know that we’re aware of the issues associated with invisible enemies and we’re working on finding both the root causes and effective solutions. I understand that these experiences can be quite frustrating but please rest assured that we do care and we are working on improving the experience.
Thank you for reporting your issues here on the forums and for your patience and understanding as we work to resolve them.
Also, MajorKong, that really was a great screenshot even if it does show a bug and bugs make me sad.
—
ArenaNet Gameplay Programmer

I don't see what the point of anything over 3 days.  Upgrades and orbs pretty much guarantee that the winning server becomes entrenched by the point.

Well on IoJ, we are in the similar scenario and it looks we are going to be fighting JQ and CD tonight, which is only slightly better.  As a single player there is no point, you need a zerg.  As a small vent group you can still still make decent badges and karma/xp and good fights.

Welp, transferred to Ehmry Bay to be with some old school gaming buddies.  Found that we were controlling the majority of everything.  At first I thought, "cool," but then it was, "er, wait, there's nothing to do is there?" 

The upshot is that it can't last.

Welp, transferred to Ehmry Bay to be with some old school gaming buddies.  Found that we were controlling the majority of everything.  At first I thought, "cool," but then it was, "er, wait, there's nothing to do is there?" 

The upshot is that it can't last.

It can last.  The entrenched group gets stronger and has high moral while the others stop playing.

At some point on the weekend I'm going to try and find a server which is completely dominating and transfer to it just so that I can run around and get all the POIs to get my 100% map completion.

Yeah, two weeks seems far too long.  We are currently getting our asses handed two us by Crystal Desert, we had a good push yesterday, but their off hours contingent wiped out any gains.  There's not much point in jumping in other than I'm trying out WvW only leveling on my Guardian.

The new matchup for Tarnished Coast isn't all that bad either. We got Maguuma again (everyone hearts the goons  :awesome_for_real:) along with Emhry Bay - which seems to have better coverage than either of the other two servers, but it's a much more balanced fight overall unlike the Dragonbrand roflstomping of last week.

Of course it's still way too early in the week to tell...

Some queue data from the current 1-week matchups (https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Queue-size-data-from-9-14-to-9-18-NA/first#post200124)

Some of the servers (like HOD) have absolutely ridiculous queue times... but many servers have basically no queues at all. The graphs are also interesting as they sorta reveal which servers have the best 24-hour coverage.

I am from HOD (i started there , not trasnferred, and it was medium pop for first week) and I gave up entirely on www. Mark said only "3%" people dont get in. - maybe across all servers , but I wasnt able to get in unless I sit 8+ hours in queue (which most of the time I dont). So well I stopped queing entirely.

Oh, you are on Gunnar? Interesting. You are going down, baby. From Desolation with love.

Can one of you WvW enthusiasts explain to me the point of WvW?  Are we just zerg humping to gain some server bonuses for a fixed window of time?  Are any of these bonuses applicable to effectiveness in pvp?  I tried WvW seriously for about a week and it really started to grate on me.  It was follow-zerg-to-tower, beat on door, rinse repeat.

I feel like I'm missing something deeper.

Only point to WvW is to have fun really. 

That means in the long term players are going to lose interest in WvW beyond world completion and legendaries.  Why pour time, sweat and money into taking and holding objectives when other team is going to take back over night when they aren't defended?  You can't stay up all night every night. There is a limited amount of off-hour guilds.  There are 6 servers who have a strong off-hours presence in NA. All of top 5 do. And the only server that can field 24hr coverage is number 1. That's not a accident. Timezones > player effort. People are going quickly lose interest in playing a NA game were NA players have structural disadvantage.

EDIT: Imagine LoL were IPX was out of a finite pool every half-hour.  You'd get shit return IPX playing in primetime and awesome rewards in the dead of night.  No one would be defending it to fair with "LoL is 24-hr game! L2P!"  Before you say IPX is a reward, score is not. I feel very rewarded with score, and I regularly count how much score my group generates for the team.

How did DAoC handle it?  I didn't do much RvR so I don't know if there were lockout times or something.

  WvW should be trying appeal average gamers. Average gamers play in NA prime time.

It's open world objective based pvp. Of course real world timing is going to matter. I guess what I don't understand is that this is typically considered a feature by the open world crowd, just as being able to bring 20 people to kill 5 is a feature, not a bug. I'd have an issue if there was some massive bonus tied to winning, but with the bonuses as is.. who cares?

Yeah this.

Ya sadly the serious business crowd managed to convince anet to nerf server transfers anyway. I'm still pissed about that as I now have 4-5 bugged skill point events I can't just server hop to fix. So anything that bugs the serious business types is just fine with me.

WvW is essentially meaningless fun.  How could there even be a serious business crowd? 

There are no average gamers in Europe or Asia? Do you want to rephrase that?

Even worse, 10% per relic was just how they described it to us rather than how they actually worked - a realm holding 3 relics actually did more than 20% bonus damage in practice, with the magic ones at least. Holding 3 relics actually meant something more like "always cap damage on all targets".

Apparently all location, speed, jumping data is done clientside.  I just saw several recent videos of people changing their jump and run speed to ridiculous amounts via 3rd party programs, and apparently this has been going on for a while (some videos showed this happening over a month ago) so Anet has no safety nets or detection for this.  Another hack lets you activate "no clipping" mode, which essentially means you can fly through the air.  And finally I even saw a video tool that lets you teleport anywhere on the map, letting them cap a bunch of vistas in the span of a minute.

Isn't "The client is in the hands of the enemy." taught in MMO 101?  As far as I know it is just as true today as when I first read it in one of Raph's postings almost two decades ago.

Apparently all location, speed, jumping data is done clientside.

All they need is a sanity check on movement.

Points for caravans would have the same issue since uncompetitive timezones could still rack up caravans.
Points for kills would lead zergs farming each other and ignoring the objectives like they did in Tor Anoc.

Even if your plan worked, it would only reduce the advantage of uncompetitive timezones by 50% at most which I don't think is enough. 75% to 80% is what it needs to reduced by. 

BTW Ruin sucks ass

I'd settle for a 100% buff once you own nothing in a bg.

Momentum is damn hard to overcome.

BTW Ruin sucks ass

Protecting caravans should give points only if enemies are attacking near the caravan.    Not sure why that wasn't put in the original design.

More timezones queued -> higher rank.

Sorry, I was mis-thinking people talking about points meant personal points, not server points.

Who really gives a shit about server points?  All I care is that our server isn't being roflstomped so I can actually have some decent wvw.

I think people are just too impatient to let the matching system work itself out. Like it was said, if you get stomped by a server with better coverage eventually you'll get matched against servers with poorer coverage just like yours. "It may not fix the I want it now" urge but try having some patience instead of trying to rewrite the rules to cover a probably already solved problem.

Of course people don't have the patience.  It's why I don't go into WvW when we are losing.  I'm playing the game to have fun, not to run 5 minutes to get curbstomped and repeat.  I don't really give a shit about server pride or fighting with the motivation to help our server come back from a losing position.  Faulting players for not having patience when they aren't having fun in a *game* is retarded.

Faster than i thought. I figured at least 1-2 more months of PvDoor before you guys got bored.

:roll:

That's not what they're talking about really. They're talking about night capping in empty frontiers, which is the only reason Henge is "dominant." During prime time WvW is hardly PvDoor. There are players to fight everywhere.

I get your point.  Perhaps my experience was colored by the fact that I was playing WvW heavily in the first month.  When you could get past the queue, it seemed that the action was at keeps far more than in open territory.  Keep fights are pretty dull affairs. 

Yeah the lack of siege made early fights a serious slog. Really that's the main thing that makes me laugh about the LATER GUYS WE WON GW2 post from TA, they're basically patting themselves on the back for being organized before the game started, and ditching it just as everyone else is getting to be rich/leveled enough to compete.

As far as I know only 2 guilds of those who were part of TA actually left the game. Rest are still playing either on HOD or on some other server despite Titan Alliance ceasing to exist. TA was only one of the so called alliances to pop up before the game started though most of those seem to have fizzled out (some even before the game actually released). TA just had the organization/luck to become the alliance perceived to be at the top for the first month of the game.

Kicking ass the first month after launch is lame as it possibly gets.  If they had pulled it off for at least a year they mighta been able to claim some kind of victory.

Perceived? They were unbeaten . The organization efforts that went into TA fully paid off in terms of victory. No one beat them even when they had 2 on 1 effort.  But most players also burnt out of www. - long queues,  stale matches.  TA already did  what they wanted - get "champion of www" title.

With most MMOs being "3 monthers" (and gw2 turning out to be not an exception) that as much one could ever hope to achieve.  Who knows maybe they will fix www eventually , but as of now - its done and done. WwW has been won, no one cares about it either

The perception part is more about how big part TA was compared to the rest of the server. No matter how big (realistically) the alliance it can't cover all the wvw maps all the time.

First month is possibly the only time anyone cares about it. 1 year later no one gives any fcks about the game at all ,let alone about www part

Perceived? They were unbeaten . The organization efforts that went into TA fully paid off in terms of victory. No one beat them even when they had 2 on 1 effort.  But most players also burnt out of www. - long queues,  stale matches.  TA already did  what they wanted - get "champion of www" title.

With most MMOs being "3 monthers" (and gw2 turning out to be not an exception) that as much one could ever hope to achieve.  Who knows maybe they will fix www eventually , but as of now - its done and done. WwW has been won, no one cares about it either

Or maybe that's why.  :why_so_serious:

Still waiting for team death match to care   :oh_i_see:

Ditto, which is surprising since it was in GW1.

As the name implies, paid automated tournaments have an entry fee. You’ll need tickets to enter a paid tournament, which you can purchase in the gem store...

...Yes, you read that correctly: you can win gems in paid tournaments. If you are REALLY good at GW2 sPvP, you can actually make gems while playing in paid tournaments

 :ye_gods:

Fooled again, we were.  Get ready for empty WvW maps.  Given the choice between focusing development on something that requires gems to participate and something that doesn't, it's not so hard to see where this is going.

Er, what? Why do you think people will ditch WvW for this?

Sport PVPers are already not WvWing for the most part I suspect. The crowd that WvW attracts is a different bunch of people.

Point being, the people who would leave WvW for this, already left. WvW is not going to empty out for this.

WvW is about being inclusive.

WvW was never thought to be as "casual".

People are happy to be zerglings in WvW, yes. The commander thing works out really well in practice actually.

ArenaNets own words. If it was serious than there wouldn't be levels or mobs to kill or a pve title track attached to it. Yes ArenaNet put a lot of thought into something that was suppose to be for pubs, there that type of company.

No competition, so better leave before it shows up.

Yeah I wish they had turned off free transfers before we grabbed the top spot.

The tier 2 slugfest has been amazingly fun.

The free transfers thing rather than helping the queues is causing a lot of bandwagoning.

A lot of the 'leet' guilds have moved to Blackgate after titan alliance imploded.

Needless to say, Tarnished Coast got matched up with Blackgate this week. Good times (not)

I don't understand the score is meaningless augment.  Many, many people care.  Queues are dramatically shorter on servers that are losing.   Score is basis of the ranking system. If scores are jacked up, then the ranking system is not going to properly match servers.  Players are flooding the servers with the highest scores/ranks.

Since A.net released the formula for the ranks, we now have a reasonable projections of the next round.   IoJ it just broke into tier 1.  No way we are tier 1 but the scoring system favors our Oceanics.

I don't understand the score is meaningless augment.  Many, many people care.  Queues are dramatically shorter on servers that are losing.   Score is basis of the ranking system. If scores are jacked up, then the ranking system is not going to properly match servers.  Players are flooding the servers with the highest scores/ranks.

Since A.net released the formula for the ranks, we now have a reasonable projections of the next round.   IoJ it just broke into tier 1.  No way we are tier 1 but the scoring system favors our Oceanics.

I don't understand the score is meaningless augment.  Many, many people care. 

As long as you put up a better fight than HOD/ET, whose populations have been decimated from alliance drama, there won't be any complaints from the JQ side.  SBI's been pushing pretty hard, and I wouldn't mind a SBI/IOJ double team effort against us.  We have a pretty strong oceanic presence as well as SBI's from what I've seen.  Most of us don't want to see the other sides crushed into hopelessness; it gets very boring.

You do realize you just had a couple huge guilds leave ET and joined your server?

It's not about caring, it's about affecting gameplay.  I would take the night capping complaints more seriously if losing affected anything, but since it doesn't i find it perfectly acceptable that servers with better coverage "win".

Just TL that I know of. I wouldn't call them huge.  Got a few small ones from JQ and HoD too. Its more about a lack of organization.  We got a lot of medium and small "try hard" guilds that do their own thing and sometimes they coordinate but mostly not.  But I don't think we want to get that much more organized because that makes it more like job than a game. This I feel contributed to burn out and the fall of HoD and ET. I hope this can be avoided here but may be a fact of life like the boom and bust of alliances in EvE.

I came over with the gaggle of tiny guilds that play with TL.

Some will say that we're hanger-on guilds or what not, but I don't really see it that way - nor do I care what is said about it. I'm an ex-catass that plays hard when I play. I can't commit to raid nights or specific times to be online and the kind of thing that guilds like TL require. Our tiny group has 4 core members and between the four of us we collectively have ~25,000 WvW kills and about 1k deaths. Not a bad ratio. A good addition to any zerg.

When we're on we're part of an organized unit accomplishing some task. Even if that task is to split up into tiny scouting units and go watch an area. (half-play breaks, keep an eye on things and report what you see.)

IoJ could be tier 1 now. They're stronger than ET was in my opinion. We're taking this week to practice some tricky moves - stuff that will hopefully allow us to stay in tier 1 for two consecutive weeks.

I came over with the gaggle of tiny guilds that play with TL.

I was talking to my buddies about ET's situation - this was post TA breaking up and prior to RUIN leaving the server. ET was in a position when many guilds from several servers were looking for new homes, and virtually nobody would look at ET due to RUIN. Now, I recognize that ET is where it was BECAUSE of RUIN, but it also kept many people away.

CD on Friday night into Saturday is an anomaly at this point. They do that every match up and they give up at the same point as well. It's very bizarre.

The prices of pvp gear seem ridiculously insane.  It takes less badges to make a legendary weapon than to buy an amulet, which costs less than 2g on the trader.

Badges: do daily jumping puzzles in the wvw zones (you also get siege plans for them) or man siege on keep defense.  

1) The jumping puzzle has been broken for well over a week.
2) Manning siege on keep defense is boring as crap, and doesn't even guarantee a steady flow badges.
3) Badges get lost in non-siege battles because you don't have time to look for any loot bags you missed because either 1) the fight moved away from where some people you killed were, 2) You died and thus can't loot any loot bags that you got during the fight, or 3) you are still fighting and don't have time to look for loot bags.
4) Badges dropping are a matter of pure luck, which I apparently don't have since I can solo people or get into large battles and come out with maybe 5-8 badges in an hour (and probably half of those are from supply camp takeovers).

Badges are ridiculously hard to come by as they are now

I can make enough gold to buy a full set of pwr/tgh/vit gear in about four hours of farming in orr also.  That's not the point, the badge prices are utterly unreasonable compared to everything else.

Badges are ridiculously hard to come by as they are now

Yep. I have about 180 badges, and haven't gotten any in my last two wvw sessions (6+ hours with plenty of killing - some offense, some defense). And I'm a ranged aoe nuker with 1200 range, so yeah. I haven't done any of the jumping puzzles (and definitely not going to do them while they're broken) -- how hard are they compared to, like, the one where you have to jump around a cave from metal beam to metal beam? (it bears repeating: fuck beams, man)

That said, the only thing I am collecting badges for is the legendary component (yeah right, as if I'll ever grind out the rest of the shit for it) and I actually seem to get more siege weapon drops than badges. Speaking of which: thank you, nameless ranger dude who tried to gank me while I was killing a sentry, your trebuchet will be put to good use!

I agree with all of that.  The BL jumping puzzles are broken, yes, but the EB one is still working.


I'm confused as to being able to buy PVT armor with gold as none of the crafted options offer PVT.  I thought it was wvw/dungeon/karma only.

{EDIT} Yup, just looked on the TP and there's not a single piece of armor that has Power/Vitality/Toughness.  To me, unless you're swimming in karma and want to make a mixed-runed set from Orr karma vendors, the easiest way to get a set of PVT is to run AC (or COE or HotW).  I like the looks of the AC armor over the other two and AC probably has the best run-rate for pugs.

{EDIT2} I agree though, the drop rate is shit for time spent.  I can get a piece of armor for 1.5 hours in AC, whereas as much as I've been WvW'ing, I don't think I've broken 200 badges between our two accounts.  I've only done a couple jumping puzzles and my eyes went wide when all the badges dropped.  Lesson: the most efficient method to get badges is to avoid fighting and do a 15 minute jumping puzzle.  Stupid.  They do need to adjust that.

The prices of pvp gear seem ridiculously insane.  It takes less badges to make a legendary weapon than to buy an amulet, which costs less than 2g on the trader.

I haven't done any of the jumping puzzles (and definitely not going to do them while they're broken) -- how hard are they compared to, like, the one where you have to jump around a cave from metal beam to metal beam? (it bears repeating: fuck beams, man)

EB jumping puzzle isn't broken, just the ones at borderlands (the door you collect the keyhalves for is bugged there) which doesn't really bother me since I don't find those nearly as interesting as the eb one.

I generally wait for a mesmer to be at the top and get a port up :P

Thief prevents zerg from capping camp.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j54bkD-3Nr0

So yeah, Crystal Desert population was so bad that 2-3 hours after reset, we started to get the outmanned buff.
I lasted around 4 hours with the guild before deciding to start a new character. Maybe necro. Or warrior.

So yeah, Crystal Desert population was so bad that 2-3 hours after reset, we started to get the outmanned buff.
I lasted around 4 hours with the guild before deciding to start a new character. Maybe necro. Or warrior.

Hello!! Here is an update for what's going on concerning the Pink Day in LA event!
I will probably edit this message if I have more informations to give, so stay tuned! ;)

We are officially gonna hold the Pink Day in LA event in Crystal Desert!!!

Here is the website: http://www.pinkday.gamergivingback.com/

Any donations for the Canadian Cancer Society would be really appreciated! The goal is to reach $13,337.00!
If you want to donate, it doesn't have to be a lot of money, if every one of us gives a little amount we will be able to reach the goal!! Let's all do our part!

This big event will begin at 12:00 pm CDT and take place in Lion's Arch!
We ask everyone to wear PINK on that day, and you could even start wearing pink in the remaining days of the week before this event since October is the month of Breast Cancer Awareness! You will be required to wear pink if you want to participate in the in game activities. We will be giving away participation prizes that have been donated by our volunteers and their guilds ( Emerald Fang [Fang], Knock Out[KO], We're All Gonna Die [WAGD], More Tears [MTs], Hope Remains, [HOPE], Indiana State University [ISU]) and there will also be bigger IRL and IG prizes that will be given by Gamers Giving Back.

So I decided to log in and see if I can find some enjoyable WvW for once.

I read on the forums last night that on my server (blackgate) we had a naked conga line spawn camping other servers cause they were owning so bad.  Log in right now and we own literrally every single map point on all *4* battlegrounds.

*sigh*

There's a pink day going on on every server (it's a GW1 tradition too, btw), I don't see the problem?

Necros don't get enough attention. Raw damage output isn't stellar but there are a lot of neat tricks that a lot of people don't really know about.

Did you drop the well which turns boons into conditions on them?


I keep telling people this, by the way. Nobody believes me. I kind of like it that way.

Yep, Well of corruption, Well of Suffering, and a full load of staff marks.

Yep, Well of corruption, Well of Suffering, and a full load of staff marks.

There's a pink day going on on every server (it's a GW1 tradition too, btw), I don't see the problem?

Due to community concerns about the effect of free transfers on world versus world, starting on November 1 we are going to change how often players are allowed to transfer worlds. After the update, players will be able to transfer worlds once every 7 days instead of once every 24 hours. We are also actively working on getting the guesting functionality in place. Thank you for your understanding

This just in:


Not sure how this affects the current situation though...aren't people waiting about that long anyway?

You guys got off to a pretty solid lead right off the bat and we've been fighting back into it since. I know that GoM doesn't have much of an overnight crew either, but this tier feels right so far.